


riverina

by outwardbound93



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 16:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7178903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry looks up at Niall, the sharp, almost antique lines of his face thrust into regal beauty by the stadium lights. Harry’s ribs press against the size of his heart. </p><p>Or, a royalty!au where Niall's a prince and Harry's the reporter that writes about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	riverina

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goreallegore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goreallegore/gifts).



> niall looks too good in a suit not to write about, but canon events mentioned in this fic happen with no real regard to the real-life timeline. the title comes from temper trap's song by the same name, which i HIGHLY recommend listening to if you get the chance, as well as the head and the heart's "all we ever knew." thank u so much for indulging me this little fairy tale.

Louis hands Harry the assignment with a suspiciously angelic look on his face, like the time he offered Harry hot chocolate laced with chocolate schnapps at the Christmas party their final year of uni. Harry’d wound up dancing on the kitchen table with a lampshade on his head and his trousers tangled helplessly around the chandelier, and none of their classmates ever let him live it down.

“Ireland,” Harry says, flipping the manila folder open. Emilia must’ve put this dossier together because it’s laced with her tight, looping handwriting, and the notes on the subject are meticulous. It’s an average-looking bloke with a truly awful dye job, and the picture’s been printed on plain printer paper, so it’s grainy and out of focus.

Even Harry, who pulled down just two terms of photography before he’d changed areas of study, thinks he could do better. (These days he only has to put out ads around the holidays to catch spouses cheating or neighbors chronically stealing newspapers for a bit of extra cash, thank goodness.)

“You were the one whingeing about wanting to get out and see the world,” says Louis patiently. He’s two weeks into being a dad and he’s already mastered that whole “I’m saying things that sound nice but really not giving you another option, so you’re going to have to act pleased, too,” thing that Harry didn’t recognize in his own mum until he was nineteen, home from school for a break, and up to his elbows in toilet cleaner. Quick on the pickup, he is.

“The world,” whines Harry. “Not our own back garden.”

"Too bad, Mr. Political Correspondent,” Louis rolls his eyes. “Besides, if you nail this assignment, you could get another, and then. I know you want to throttle me for this but trust me, Haz, I’m doing you a favor.”

Harry tucks his chin down and rolls his eyes over the dossier without really paying attention. He’s constructing his next argument in his head.

“Give it up,” Louis says. He stands up and strides around his desk to open the door to his office, obviously inviting Harry to shoo.

Harry drags his feet back to his untidy little cubicle and proceeds to spend the rest of his morning organizing the file folders on his desktop and making minute, indistinguishable changes to his portfolio that he doesn’t bother saving because he appreciates a little bit of grammatical laxity when it makes him seem more approachable, friendly, even in a write-up on conflict in the Middle East.

Lunchtime rolls around with inexorable slowness. Harry eats a salad from Wendy’s and wanders down to the mailroom to chat with Luke and that lot about the Golden State Warriors, whoever they are, and talk about their scrimmage league, which is shaping up really nicely this year. They were casual mates back in uni but now that Harry has the opportunity to see them every day he’s hung his heart on them in a way that he wouldn’t have expected before. Harry thinks it has to do with noticing the ways they’ve grown up more than he’s ever seen it in the mirror.

After lunch Harry decides to clean out his inbox, so he gets five emails deep and then he starts rereading all of the old love letters he and Grim exchanged before that relationship went the way of so many of Harry’s dalliances. The thing is he’s not quite sure what he’s doing wrong, anymore, or why meeting a stranger and chatting them up doesn’t have the spark of potential that it used to.

Nowadays Harry finds himself not wanting to start any conversations with new people at the coffee shop or the club; he’d much rather get his drink and finish his novel or stay for three quick dances and then go home and tuck himself into his room to watch Friends on Netflix and eat leftover pizza. He used to be so fun, Harry thinks miserably, and doesn’t know what happened.

So it’s not until he’s tucked up under his covers that night, sleepy with the half a glass of wine he drank while Facetiming with Gemma about her wedding plans, itchy under the collar because his sister’s getting married and his best mate’s a dad, that Harry finally reads the file in earnest.

“Wha?” Louis answers the phone sounding more than half asleep.

“This must be a joke,” Harry says. “Louis, _The Reporter_ wants a three-part biography of – of,” Harry squints to read the words aloud, “‘Niall Horan, heir apparent of the kingdom of Northern Ireland.’ He looks like a potato, Lou. And what am I, E! news?”

Louis heaves a deep sigh. “Listen, talk to him, find something to love about him, jot it down so we can print five hundred thousand copies of it and I can finally get some sleep. It’s what you were hired for, Harry.”

Harry leans back against the headboard and picks at his IKEA duvet comforter, the white one with flowers and vines on it. He took a few pictures of his college girlfriend, Cara, wrapped up in it and she’d sent them off to a modeling agency and signed a contract a couple of weeks later. What a life. “I wanted to go to, like, places that needed me, Louis. Places that needed someone to care. Not princes with a golfing addiction and bad taste in hats.”

Louis’s voice, when he answers, is low and slow and smooth, almost like a lullaby. Harry leans into his words like he used to lean into his mother’s shins. “I know it’s not fun, Harry. It’s sticking it out. That’s what we’re doing now, you see?”

Harry shuffles his way down the bed and nods. Louis can’t see it, but he must know Harry well enough to know what he’s done. Instead of hanging up the phone, he carries it with him to the nursery, where Harry can hear the squall of Louis’s new baby. Louis shushes him gently and sits down in the rocking chair, the wood squeaking under his weight. Harry listens to him hum to his baby for as long as he can manage, and next thing he knows, it’s morning. Harry wakes up in his chilly little flat and thinks that he better make sure his VISA isn’t out of date.    

***

Harry gets seated next to a mum and her little girl on his flight to Ireland, which is potentially the best thing that’s happened to him since the homeless gent on the Tube station told him that his shoelaces were great last weekend. Harry chatters with the toddler about her favorite kiddy TV shows, whether blue is a better color than red, and how she feels about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a good half hour before the kid puts her head down in her mum’s lap and falls asleep.

Harry cracks open his laptop and opens a new Word document to begin his travelogue, which is how he’s decided to think of this trip. He’ll report everything that he seems in excruciating detail so that he can go back later and pick out all the important bits and make a story out of it. He feels like it’s a very Bridget Jones thing to do, but the blank white screen is too intimidating to make a first brush on, so he fields an email from his own mum instead.

Anne makes an email feel as warm and comforting as a hug. She’s written about the geraniums in the front garden and Robin starting to see a chiropractor for his bad back and how Gemma’s turned into something of a bridezilla, which is only to be expected and Harry must remember that he loves her more than anything in the world.

Harry reads over the words and feels. Well. He’s still her son – he’ll always be that – but why does it feel like she’s not written to him? It’s more like…it’s more like a journal entry, actually. Harry feels a pang of grief deep in his chest. He knew he was a little out of touch with himself. He just didn’t realize his mum knew it, too. Harry sends back a vague description of his new assignment and some of his favorite bits that his new three-year-old friend, Lizzy, said. He doesn’t mention how much he’d rather be spending his life doing something with purpose. She probably knows.

 _I miss you,_ Harry finishes the email, and sends it off. At least it’s done, even if he doesn’t feel any less uneasy in his own skin. Harry makes a note to visit his tattoo artist when he gets back, longing for the sting of the needle on his skin, a new mark, a new step. A new lightning rod, he thinks, to ground himself.

The fasten seatbelt light comes on, so Harry prepares for the descent.

He’s greeted at the terminal by a tall bloke in his late forties or early fifties, by Harry’s estimate. His hair is thinning a bit at the top and he’s got a grizzle of pale ginger and salt and pepper beard, and his eyes twinkle even under poor airport lighting. Harry takes an immediate shine to him. “Basil,” he holds out his hand. He tucks the HARRY STYLES sign he’d held under his arm and reaches to take Harry’s carry-on so smoothly Harry actually gives it to him.

“Harry,” Harry says, just to be polite. The in-ear Basil is wearing and the firmness in his handshake just make the light of mischief in his eyes that much more exciting. “It’s good to meet you.”

Basil laughs. “I’m sure it is. I’ve got a car ready to take you to the house where you’ll be staying. Niall should be there; he’s hosting an event tonight, so you’ll get a chance to meet him then.”

Harry puts two and two together faster than he might’ve expected from himself, what with hurrying to keep up with Basil’s long strides and the deep Irish tinge to his voice. “House,” he repeats doubtfully.

“Niall doesn’t like calling it a mansion, but,” Basil shrugs.

Princes. Mansions. Of course, Harry thinks. He imagines himself sat at his computer this evening, taking the day’s notes. _The dashingly handsome royal security guard fetched me from the airport on orders from the prince, about whom I gathered that he was modest, at least outwardly, and potentially very ugly, given that he dared not show his face in the airport._

Journalistic neutrality be damned, Harry thinks, and mentally deletes his pretend journal entry with a sigh.

Harry’s never been to Ireland before even though it’s practically a stone’s throw from England. He had the opportunity the summer before he went to uni when some of his friends were taking gap years, but he’d passed on the opportunity to be flown to Syria to meet some of the refugees there and do what little part he could in making their lives more livable. Some people Harry knows spent time in orphanages where nutrition was so poor that the babies couldn’t survive, but they’d love on the children anyway. Harry doesn’t think he’s got what it takes to do that.

Ireland is every bit as green as one might expect, if not more so; the lush hills roll on outside his car window. Tires rolling over blacktop sound exactly the same no matter what country you’re in, he muses. Bas fiddles with the radio and tunes the car some Top 40 station playing The Head and the Heart, _I’m feeling low, feeling high, feeling down, why isn’t this enough?_ Harry wants to ask Bas to turn it off, but he doesn’t want Bas to ask why, and there’s something manful about putting himself through something uncomfortable like looking his reflection in the eye and recognizing that he’s not as young now as he was yesterday. Harry pulls the brim of his hat further down over his forehead, and says nothing.

Bas steers the car down a semi-circular cobblestone driveway in front of an estate on the outskirts of Dublin. The grounds are verdant and rolling and ivy crawls over the front of the house. It looks like something out of a storybook. It reminds Harry of _Howards End,_ and the epigraph “Only connect…” Harry doesn’t quite see what there is to connect to out here in the middle of the country, not so much as a phone line in sight. Despite the openness of the sky over the hills Harry feels a minute little pang of claustrophobia at having been cut off from everything but this one little house.

“You’ll get used to it,” Bas tells Harry. Harry wonders what he saw in his expression.

Harry hopes not. His goal is to get a story to turn into Louis and find a way to leverage that to getting sent out to the field, to Somalia or Siberia or anywhere, really, where he wasn’t just writing puff pieces about political sex scandals or unpaid traffic tickets.

Bas parks the car in an open-sided garage to the side of the house. Harry unbuckles his seat belt and rounds the boot before Bas can grab his bag for him because Harry was raised right, thank you very much. His little notebook and pen are tucked into the front pocket of his laptop case in the event that Harry has the opportunity to jot any quotes down, or he gets nervous and needs something to do with his hands.

Basil shoulders the door open, and Harry’s greeted with laughter that doesn’t so much echo as it does reverberate. The house doesn’t feel empty. Bas glances back to make sure Harry’s following, and then he leads the way to the back of the house. Harry studies the surprisingly tasteful décor – nothing over the top or stupid expensive, nothing even all that telling; the place looks like it might’ve been picked out of an IKEA catalogue.

In the back – parlor, someone might’ve called it; living room, Harry prefers – is a group of ten people scattered over two soft-looking leather couches and the carpeted wooden floor. Their faces are flushed with laughter and mostly-empty wine glasses on the coffee table.

“Who’s this?” a bloke with a riot of brown hair asks.

Harry goes to touch his curls and stops himself just a moment too late. He chopped most of his hair off when he landed the gig with Louis but he still misses it, sometimes – the way he looked, not so prim and professional, more like he feels than the person he thought he wanted to be.

“Harry Styles,” Harry quickly introduces himself. He hesitates before he explains where he’s from and why he’s here. Sometimes people act the way around reporters that they do around cameras. Finally, he settles on, “I’m from _The Reporter._ ”

The room gives a collective shrug. “Come on in, grab a drink,” offers a bloke standing off to the side. His voice has an edge of laughter to it even though he’s not laughing, like Louis’s does sometimes, so Harry says yes.

He floats around the party long enough to get a general idea of who’s here. There’s a couple of blokes from radio, and some journalists like Harry, and a handful of celebrities he recognizes from the glossy pages of gossip rags at the checkout counter. Not quite movers and shakers, but the kind of people who build an image. Harry wonders what kind of image this tipsy party blasting Carly Rae Jepsen conveys.  

Harry winds up sat on a windowsill to feel the gentle breeze on his back. He always drinks too much too fast and then he gets sleepy, so he’s trying to stay alert. There’s a bloke with eyes Mediterranean ocean blue, deep and bright as sunshine. Predictably, Harry finds himself talking quite a lot. He’s always thought it’s better to say too much than come across as cold or indifferent.

“This seems more like a move-in party at a uni than some, like, princely event.”

“Yeah?” the bloke asks. Harry’s pretty sure he hadn’t seen him earlier when he was making the rounds introducing himself, but then, Harry was late, too. He’d introduced himself when they met but Harry was so busy thinking about saying his own name without tripping over the words that he can’t quite remember now. “How so?”

Harry shrugs. “Dunno. Just seems like,” Harry licks his lips and tastes the salt-sweet taste of beer, “ineffective, you know? Like, what’s the point? You know, I spent all this time learning about, like, Rasputin or someone who totally changed the course of human history. I mean, probably. We’ll never know but it bears consideration, right? And then, like, here I am, sent to write about some newfound prince from a country that doesn’t need a king, let alone a prince, and it’s like. There’s so much other stuff that happens and my write-up about a cocktail party and a redundant monarchy are what people want to read about instead, you know?” Harry heaves a sigh. He shouldn’t have started drinking.

“But not you,” says this bloke with the blue eyes. He’s a bit average-looking, this side of skinny with a mop of dyed-blond hair and an uneven smile hitched onto his face. He looks tragically real. Harry wants to give him a hug, or maybe he wants to be hugged.

“No, I mean,” Harry says. “I definitely read them when I’m in line at the grocers, too.” He finds himself laughing. “But I want to be bigger than that, you know?”

The bloke smiles. His face is still a little uneven, and his skin is dry, his lips cracked. He looks genuine, is the thing. “So, this prince, then…?”

“A make-believe distraction for a country whose independence has been disputed for thousands of years,” Harry says. “And not that he’s not probably a fine person, but also kind of a waste of my time.”

The blond-haired bloke’s eyebrows go up, and then he shrugs and smiles and starts talking about the Coldplay concert he went to a few weeks ago. Harry chats with him until his drink runs empty and then he makes a detour on his way for a refill to snoop around the house.

Harry’s busily trying to take an aesthetic picture of the clutch of wine corks he gathered up like a milkmaid hunting for eggs when Louis rings him. Harry pockets the corks and wanders out of the den. The house has been pretty boring so far, all pristine cleanliness and straight lines of sight, angled to let the light in. Harry likes it even though it’s nothing like his own flat back home stacked high with all the furniture he’d taken out of his and Louis’s last apartment, his mementos from college and all the stuff his mum sent him from home. The clutter is nice. Like a little bird’s nest.

“Well?” asks Louis. “How’s he, this prince, then?”

Harry shrugs, forgetting that Louis can’t see him. “Haven’t met him yet. Maybe he’s like the Beast in Beauty and the Beast – er, I mean, Cupid, from the Psyche myth – I’m very cultured you know – there really was rather a lot of wine. D’you reckon he’s ugly? He has fine taste in wine.”

“You wouldn’t know cheap wine from a thousand-dollar bottle if you drank ‘em both,” Louis laughs. “Uncultured asshole. I give you the best assignment I’ve ever seen and you’re getting drunk and talking to me.”

Harry contemplates feeling a little offended. “How’s the baby?”

“Good,” Louis sighs. “Still not sleeping and last time I tried to burp him he threw up all over me, but you know how it is.”

Harry hums, feeling a single, solitary note of satisfaction. _See_? he thinks, childishly. “I don’t, actually,” he tells Louis instead.

Louis makes a soft sound, not quite shushing, just acknowledging. Harry loves it when little kids answer questions that way because it’s such – it’s such a non-answer, really. “You will,” he says. “Anyway. Hang up on me and get back to snooping, rock star.”

Harry moans and groans and abruptly hangs up on Louis, just like he always has. He likes that they don’t ever say goodbye because he doesn’t reckon he’d want to say that to Louis, who’s grown up with him and, if Harry’s honest with himself, a little past him. Harry doesn’t let himself think about it any more than that, though. He pockets his phone and returns to the parlor for one last round of shots before he tracks down his room to put his best face on for the evening.

 _Not much longer,_ he tells himself, and doesn’t really know what he means. Sometimes it’s like he’s waiting for something to happen to him and it doesn’t even really matter if it’s something good or bad, like landing a new job interview or coming home to find Louis sat on the couch with his head in his hands; something that’d change everything. But now Harry’s at the point in his life where the best thing he can do is hold steady. Keep this job, take every opportunity he can to write headline pieces, maybe someday apply for a television gig, travel to far-off places to find out what it is he’s been looking for all his life. Make a difference.

It’s such a shame that it feels so unattainable right now, though. To feel _big._

Harry spends an hour and a half in his room flipping through his camera roll for the pictures he took while he was snooping and sorting them between images for his article and Instagram material, and then he answers a couple of emails asking after longer pieces he promised to write about stuff he used to care so much about that he can’t quite dredge up any energy for anymore. Stuff like his favorite Temper Trap album or those lyrics that echoed endlessly between songs he’d heard for ages and ages afterward. _Working on it,_ he always sends back.

Then he eats a handful of complimentary peanuts the housekeeping staff left on the bathroom counter and changes into a fresh button-up shirt. Harry goes to tie his hair up into a bun before he remembers he doesn’t have enough hair for that anymore, and then he just runs his hand through it to sort out the worst of the tangles.

The rest of this afternoon’s party guests are already milling about in the dining room when Harry arrives with his little pen pad and pencil. More guests have arrived, too, and Harry actually recognizes a few of them. Aiden and Nina and Simone from years of journalism school and the years of writing afterwards. Harry gives them a professional nod and forcibly restrains himself from crushing them into a hug, or poking them hard between the eyes. It really is an industry event, in its way. Introduce the newly crowned princeling to the press in a setting he’s comfortable with, then let them introduce him to the world. Harry wonders if they got the idea from Prince William and Kate.

Harry wouldn’t say he can _feel_ it when the prince enters the dining room, even though that’s what Harry’s brain wants him to believe. Really it’s something like a ripple effect originating from those closest to him and emanating out like a wave of piqued interest, herd instincts never quite buried all the way down. Harry sips at his glass of champagne and tries not to look too interested.

It’s. Well. _Shit,_ Harry thinks, and hears it in Louis’s voice. It’s exactly what Louis will say to him when he finds out that Harry chatted shit about the prince to his own face.

Good luck to Harry for getting that exclusive quote for _The Reporter_ now, he thinks, unsympathetically. And then the panic kicks in. Louis’s gonna try to kill him.

Harry vacillates between fretting about how to deal with disappointing Louis and the supreme guilt of having been so massively impolite to someone all through dinner. The best he can do, he figures, is apologize to the bloke. The prince. Best case scenario he can get a funny little anecdote out of it. Worst case scenario he’ll be banned from the united countries of Ireland for the rest of his life.

Not that Harry should be surprised, but it’s actually quite hard to sneak a word in with the prince when so many other people want to have a word with him, too. Harry loiters just a few steps away at the open bar drinking cranberry juice and waiting for an opportunity to present itself, which was also how he convinced the prettiest girl in school to dance with him when he was fourteen.

Harry’s chance comes when a big bloke with an earpiece – security, Harry would bet anything on it – gently nudges Aiden back after his – Harry checks his watch – thirty seconds of interview time. Harry slides into the space Aiden was previously occupying. Harry’s carefully prepared apology flies right out of his head, and he says, “I’m sorry, you really don’t look like a potato, sorry sorry.”

Niall, or the prince, or a bloke who really doesn’t look like anything more than someone Harry would run into at two o’clock in the morning at Tesco, blinks and smiles. He doesn’t so much smile as his cheek creases, really, but it feels like a smile. “Of course,” he says, and seems genuine.

Harry narrows his eyes. “What I meant to say,” he says, instead of asking any one of half a thousand relevant and political hot-button questions, “is that it was really very rude of me to have spoken so ill about you – let alone to your own face – and what I said, I hope you know, doesn’t reflect on, like, how I feel about _you,_ Potato Niall – er, I mean…” Harry stumbles to a stop, positive that his face is combusting. “God. I’m so sorry.”

The prince’s cheeks are creased again in an expression Harry is increasingly convinced to be disbelief at best. “Really,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. People say rotten stuff about me all the time. At least you said it to my face.”

 _I wouldn’t have if I’d known it was you,_ Harry thinks, and wonders if maybe that’s the point. The bulky security guard puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, so Harry takes an automatic step back and grasps helplessly for something to say that isn’t stupid or worse, hurtful. He’s still trying to think of something that night, when he’s tucked up in bed under soft sheets in the prince’s house, and the next morning, when he’s on a plane far away.

***

“He was rotten,” Harry says, when Jade asks him what the prince was like. He’s been back at work for all of four hours and no fewer than fifteen coworkers have asked him about his little weekend trip to the green island. “Really. He had a very ordinary face and he was just about the most disingenuous person I’ve ever met.”

“Everybody else wrote him up as a lovely lad,” Perrie says doubtfully. She hands him a printout of Aiden’s write-up in the _Times,_ her nails perfectly manicured and glossy. “Aiden says he’s an absolute delight, says he’s very funny and on the up and up. Honestly, Harry, what did you even ask him?”

Harry chews over his bottom lip. “Well. I didn’t really get the chance to ask him many questions, to be honest.”

His own write-up boiled down to a load of hogwash about how he seemed like a postmodern celebrity, some blather about vampires in Victorian novels, and his taste in IKEA-inspired décor.

“I just don’t understand,” Louis says, when he got it. “I thought you knew I was trying to help you out, Harry.”

Which is why Harry’s on the phone with every publicist he’s ever met that might do him a favor. He’s angling for an invite to Niall’s next announced event, something to do with golf and roses. It’s all well and good, Harry thinks, and doesn’t particularly care. It could be at a wedding dress shop and he – oh, shit, Harry realizes. He puts his work phone on hold and dials Gemma as fast as he can, pinching his lip between his fingers.

“Only a day late this time,” Gemma says, picking up with the slenderest thread of a sigh in her voice. “How are you, little brother?”

His work phone keeps ringing and ringing while Harry works his way through his contacts, and all he can think is, _A day._ He just needs thirty seconds to get something worthwhile out of Niall. A second chance. Harry wonders how much time he’ll need to make this slip up to Gemma. “I didn’t mean to forget,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Gem, I was in Ireland and then I had to do a write-up, and –”

Gemma cuts him off swiftly. She’s gentle but firm, and mostly, it’s a gift. “I know, little brother. I love you, too. But if you don’t start showing up to something, I don’t know – it’s just a fitting and I know wedding dresses aren’t your favorite thing” (even though they both know that Harry spent more time toddling around in their mum’s old gowns and heels than Gemma did when they were tiny kids) “but I invite you to stuff because I care. I just thought that, like. You’d care because I did.”

“I do,” Harry says, fervently. “I really, really do, Gem. I promise, I’ll be there.”

“Alright,” Gemma says, sighing through her nose. She makes plans with him for a cake tasting in a week at her favorite bakery in their hometown, which is – a visit home is always a lot. Mainly Harry’s always reminded how small he could be, and should he feel more accomplished at this point in his life?

Anyway. Harry agrees.

Harry’s work phone stops playing that awful lift music – although he only really hears lift music on the phone, not so much in the lift, if he thinks about it; they should call it dial tone music – and he wrangles himself a spot at the Horan & Rose Charity Gala and golf event. The second attempt has got to go better than the first.

***

Harry wears his finest suit to the event before the golf thing. He likes the impression he gives off on the street in front of the narrow flat he moved into after Louis came down with a baby and kindly asked Harry to move out to make room for his new child. Harry imagines that he could look like anyone whose life was really moving places, and it helps him believe in the illusion that maybe he is. Then he walks up the street to the Tube station that’ll take him to the neighborhood in London where this bash is going on.

Standing in the dingy Tube station with half a dozen other passengers – a gent in a suit like him, a mother with her little child, a young couple – fills Harry’s head with the soft, staticky feeling of time folding over. He’s here now, aged 22, trying to make the next professional leap, and he was here aged 18, stinking drunk and leaning on Louis just to stay upright.

He’d never so much as even used the Tube before he moved to London for uni, but he got used to it quick. Louis had all sort of knowledge like that, _street smarts_ his mum would call it, and something about it was so darkly glittering and fabulous to Harry. These days he takes cabs as much as he can, but sometimes, like now, he’ll still take the steps down to a Tube station and feel like himself just a few years younger but so much fresher. He feels how different he is now.

Harry tucks himself against the carriage wall and props his iPad up on his knees to go over his research materials and take whatever notes he thinks might come in handy. His brain wanders almost immediately, and Harry finds himself googling castles in Ireland. One Wikipedia rabbit hole later, his stop is called, and Harry packs his computer away into his messenger bag with a sigh.

There’s two blocks between Harry’s Tube stop and the hotel where the charity event is going on. Harry decides to be pragmatic and take some initiative, so he stops to get a cup of coffee. It’s steaming in the chill on the early winter air, and Harry congratulates himself on the good idea. He’s not congratulating himself very much three steps later when he bumps into a man hurrying out of a shop and spills coffee all down his front.

“This is not my year,” Harry says, to no one in particular.

No one responds, naturally.

Harry contemplates just going shirtless under his blazer, but he’s pretty sure that that’d be worse than a coffee stain, and he doesn’t have time to turn around and go home and all the shops are already closed.

“Perfect,” Harry tells himself. Fitting.

He joins the queue of journalists and reporters jostling for space against the velvet ropes outside of Two Temple Place, where the charity party – sorry, charity gala – is taking place. There’s a bunch of celebrities already gathered on the red carpet rolled out for them this afternoon by a staff of workers Harry bets couldn’t afford a single one of Victoria Beckham’s sparkling diamond earrings. The whole thing makes him feel a bit sideways.

Aiden’s there again, bless him, so Harry elbows his way through the mob of press and shouts into his ear, “The prince shown up yet?”

"What, Harry?” Aiden asks, looking excited at the idea.

“No, the Irish one.”

“Oh,” says Aiden. “No, I don’t think so. What’s he look like again?”

Harry just rolls his eyes. He can see himself in the middle of this crowd as though not a part of it, himself in an expensive suit and a coffee stain down his front like an aged battle wound, trying to profit from someone else’s charity. He can’t say he much likes the image.

Twenty minutes creep by tearfully slow. Harry takes a couple of photos of golfers’ names he recognizes from watching telly with Robin when he got home drunk and half-stoned from friends’ houses. Robin will get a kick out of it, at least.

Then, just when Harry’s wondering whether he ought to see if any of these other blokes would sell him their unsoiled shirt, a sleek silver car pulls up to the kerb and Niall steps out.

He looks polished and sleek and almost indistinguishable from the rest in his tailored suit; it turns Harry’s stomach against him, even though they’re both part of the same thing. Publicity, and profiteering, or something like that.

To Harry’s surprise, he doesn’t have to do his utmost to get Niall’s attention. Niall stops every few steps down the press line for pics and single-question interviews, and he pauses right in front of Harry, his eyes on him. He’s wearing glasses tonight. Had he worn glasses before?

“Fancy seeing you here,” Niall says.

Harry takes a deep breath. “Right, I know, I got myself a pass so I could – because I want to try again, for a real interview –”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Niall says, in his broad Irish accent. He doesn’t sound very polished or sleek.

Harry narrows his eyes. The clamor all around him of other members of the press, their camera shutters flashing, traffic behind them in the street, becomes so much background noise. “What are you talking about? Of course I do.”

Niall laughs. “I’m serious, mate. It’s no big deal. Just give my publicist a ring and she’ll set something up.”

“Why?” Harry asks suspiciously. He’s painfully aware of how long he’s dominated Niall’s attention, Niall a _prince,_ Niall who’s organized this whole thing. Harry wants to pinch his pink cheek. All Harry can think about is Louis putting someone else’s write-up in his hands of how great Niall was. How great he _seemed_. It feels – Harry casts about for the right word – phony. “I was awful to you. You should be furious with me. I could be banned from Ireland.”

Niall sighs exasperatedly. Harry feels a weird vindictive rush of satisfaction. “What the hell? You want me to be angry with you?”

“Yes,” Harry says.

Niall shrugs, almost helplessly. “Fucking hell, mate. Fine.”

“Wait, but – I didn’t ask you –”

Niall’s laugh is disbelieving. “I’m angry with you, remember? I’m not going to answer any of your questions tonight.” And just like that, his skinny blond arse swans away.

“Fuck,” Harry says, to no one in particular.

“Yeah, you cocked that one up for sure,” Aiden puts in.

Harry rather preferred no one answering him, to be honest.

*** 

“You do have possibly the worst case of self-destruction I’ve ever seen,” Louis tells Harry when Harry flings himself across their old couch and drapes a dramatic arm over his face. Harry misses this apartment, and the way it felt like home, so much that he only comes round when he feels proper awful.

“You should just fire me,” Harry says. “I don’t know what I was thinking, going into journalism. I should’ve applied for, like, the Peace Corp.”

Louis says dryly, “Well, why don’t you? But no, I’m not going to fire you. Watching you fuck up over and over again is too entertaining. And also, I’m not letting you off that easy.”

Harry sighs again, a little. Louis’s baby toddles around the living room floor on hands and knees. Harry’s traitorous heart clinches in fondness.

“Go on,” Louis says. “Pick him up.”

It’s not like Harry needed permission, but there’s – it’s like, when they were in school together, Harry would use his toothbrush without a second thought. They shared a bed on nights they were too drunk to make it to their rooms separately. And now Louis has this whole life that Harry’s not a part of. He scoops the baby up off the floor and sits him on his stomach. Harry oofs.

“Isn’t it great?” Louis asks giddily. “He’s brilliant, getting fatter and fatter.”

 _I’m fat,_ Harry thinks jealously. Then he hears himself thinking and could laugh, or cry. Oh, what a life.

Louis’s baby, Freddie, contemplates Harry curiously. His tiny fingers curl around Harry’s thumbs, Harry helping him sit upright, and. He can’t blame Louis, Harry knows.

“Okay,” sighs Harry. “I’ll give it another shot tomorrow.”

“There you go,” Louis murmurs, and leans over to pluck his baby out of Harry’s grip and toss him into the air. 

***

The next morning dawns bright and early for Harry, who’s awoken by Louis dropping Freddie onto his chest and loudly singing Broadway showtunes. Harry hates them both passionately. He cradles the baby to his chest and sits up carefully.

“You,” he tells Harry, “are going to a golf course.”

“I don’t want to,” Harry says at once. He can’t imagine this next meeting with Niall going any better than the last one, or the one before that. He’s quite ready to pack it in until fate brings them together again, really.

Louis puts his hands on his hips. “What about last night, ‘give it another shot’?”

“I’ve seen the cold light of day,” Harry says. “And it’s awful and smells like baby poop.”

“Welcome to the real world,” Louis says. He plucks a spatula out of the tin on the counter and drops a frying pan onto the hob. “Now, chop chop.”

Louis gives Harry his press badge so that he can turn up to the golf course and not get instantly turned away. Harry did his hair special to look more like Louis; he’s waxed it up and off his forehead in a quiff, and while he thinks he looks like someone who was born in the 1920s, he can’t deny the resemblance.

“Now, don’t sully my reputation,” Louis says, a baby balanced on his hip, Harry’s stomach full of Louis’s homemade breakfast.

“You know I love you, right?” Harry asks.

“Yeah,” says Louis. “Go on, then.”

Harry makes it to the golf course without a problem. He feels a bit like the bloke who can’t get the girl of his dreams to go to prom with him, really. Like he’s just chasing after someone who would rather not have anything to do with him. Although if he thinks about it, he wouldn’t have had a problem if he hadn’t been feeling shitty and taken it out on someone he didn’t even know.

Well. Yeah.

“I can’t believe you had the nerve to show up,” says Niall, when he spots Harry gulping down a bottle of water in the press room.

“I realize,” Harry says, “we probably got off on the wrong foot.”

“You want to make it up to me?” Niall asks.

Harry eyes him suspiciously. Finally, he thinks. Something gritty and real and even unkind about this guy, who looks frustratingly comfortable in his golf clothes same as he did his tux. He likes the look of this prince with a frayed edge, like the seamless perfection of him is something Harry can pick at and peel away. “Okay,” Harry says.

“Great,” says Niall. “You’re my caddy.”

The smell of the golf course is what hits Harry first; it smells like manure and fresh sod and sunscreen and sweat, and Harry’s in love at once, immediately. He forgot how much he loved this.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile before,” Niall observes.

“So,” says Harry. “Do you plan on adopting the British pound sterling, or the Euro system?”

Niall lets out a little huffing sigh, rolls his eyes, and passes Harry the keys to their golf cart.

“Okay,” Niall says, hurrying off the golf cart at the first hole. “From now on, I’m driving.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asks. He adjusts the sunnies sliding down the bridge of his nose. He’s got the full white onesie caddy kit on, and it’s sort of ugly, but at least it hides how much he’s sweating already. Mornings dawn so bright and warm, and by four o’clock in the afternoon, he’s shivering in his sweater and jeans. Harry’s dreading the onset of winter as much as he’s looking forward to it. Winter means Christmas and having off work. Winter means spending the holidays with Gemma’s fiancé. Which, speaking of, he’s got that cake tasting tomorrow. Harry gives a little internal sigh. “I’m an ace driver.”

“Ace driver, ace reporter, is there anything you can’t do?”

Harry shrugs. He’s not sure what has him answering honestly. “Dunno. Ace peace corps guy, I thought once.”

“Yeah? You applied?”

Harry scratches the side of his nose and narrowly dodges a patch of grass he could _swear_ wasn’t there a second ago. He declines to comment.

“Given a chance,” Niall says, “I think most people are capable of more good than they know. But you have to give yourself a chance.”

Harry spares Niall a cautious glance, Niall doing him the favor of looking away, so Harry yanks the wheel and almost flips the cart.

“You fucking maniac,” Niall laughs.

At the next hole, “I’d go for the driver,” Harry opines, eyeing the keel of the course and how dry the grass is beneath their feet.

Niall stops and cocks his head. “You play?”

“No,” Harry lies. “But if I did, I bet I could play better than you.”

Niall rolls his eyes and drops his ball onto the tee. The press of spectators and media just a few dozen yards away feels distant and remote under the baking heat and the simple, perfect mechanics of a golf game. Harry’s shoulder aches from caddying the golf bag, and he feels viscerally alive.

“How do you know I’m not going to, like, kidnap you?” Harry asks. “Shouldn’t you have security?”

“My security is always watching,” Niall says. “Like, always. Don’t worry about it.”

Harry tries very hard not to think about picking the wedgie this onesie is giving him. “Right. How do you feel about taxing British imports?”

Niall swings at the ball. His body turns like the plastic ballerina in a music box, and Harry lets out a low whistle. “Driver could’ve gotten you an extra hundred feet.”

“Shut up,” Niall says.

He uses the driver on the next hole, though.

The morning burns into noon with the sound of Niall striking golf balls. He’s got a clean, smooth stroke, and he laughs at bad swings same as he does good ones.

Niall takes an interview on the seventh hole with a pretty journalist with glossy hair. He’s crossing the course, and it’s like Harry sees the moment in slow motion: his feet losing traction on the still-damp grass, his balance going out from under him. Harry thinks about letting him fall for as long as he thinks at all, and then he tries to grab his arm, Niall’s fingers catch on Harry’s sleeve, and they both take a tumble down to the ground.

Harry looks up at the overcast sky and feels the wet grass soaking into his borrowed caddy’s uniform, and he starts laughing. Niall offers him his hand to help him up, and it’s just – “Thanks for trying to help, I guess,” Niall says blankly – it’s just right. And, oh, well. So what?

Hashtag OhNoNiall is trending on Twitter no more than an hour later. Niall buys himself and Harry a round of drinks back at the golf club to celebrate.

“What a fucking day,” Harry giggles into his drink.

“I’ve had worse,” Niall acknowledges. “And we raised fourteen million pounds for charity. That’s not bad at all, is it?”

“So you’re going to convert to pounds,” Harry says, lifting his head from the palm of his hand, and Niall sighs.

He asks, “I take it you have everything you need for the piece you’re writing?”

Harry shrugs. He can see the faint shadow of Niall’s eyelashes fanned out across the tops of his cheeks, and the faint, light bristle of five o’clock shadow. His blue eyes are speckled with flecks of pale, pale green, and his cheeks are flushed from the drinks. He doesn’t look so poreless and perfect anymore. He looks achingly real, actually.

“Shame,” Niall says, holding out his drink to Harry for a toast. “I was finally getting used to you, too.”

***

Harry’s article on the crown prince of Ireland gains traction the moment someone notices that he was Niall’s caddy, too. Harry thinks it’s the tone of the first two entries to his article that are what does people in. He sounds like someone slowly but grudgingly won over to Niall’s side, which – well, it does well for a politician, anyway. A prince.

“He was alright,” he tells Gemma when they’re sat together at a little round table to test out fifteen different flavors of cake. He has the article on his phone and keeps refreshing to watch the hit count rise. His stomach aches distantly, in a way that’s not entirely pleasant; that feels like being distinctly _seen._

Gemma raises a doubtful eyebrow. “What was it you said to me the first time? That he was rotten?”

“I did not,” Harry lies. He thinks of Niall now, his hairline rimmed in sweat and his eyes contrasting. The Pro-Am raised something like ten million pounds for charity. “Anyway, it’s not like we’re friends. I just said he’s nice to be around.”

“You said, and I quote, _He doesn’t necessarily make a good first impression, but that’s the pleasure of him. He gets better the longer you know him._ Face it, Haz. You’re a fan.”

Harry huffs and rolls his eyes. “If anything, he’s a fan of mine. Also, I am a fan of the peanut butter praline crunch.”

Gemma wrinkles her nose. “For a wedding? I don’t want people to sugar crash twenty minutes into the reception, Harry.”

“Mm,” Harry hums. He samples the red velvet cheesecake with buttercream frosting. “What if you just did, like, a cake sampling wedding cake. Like a Frankenstein’s monster, but with cake.”

“It’d be a lot less likely to chase me all the way to the Arctic and set itself on fire,” Gemma shrugs. Harry lets himself laugh. Gemma smiles back. “Okay,” she starts. “How about chocolate cheesecake with strawberry frosting?”

They go back and forth until they settle on vanilla cake with a thick layer of cheesecake with buttercream frosting. Gemma’s still smiling, so Harry nudges her shoulder with his on their way out of the shop. “Happy?” he asks, and wonders how long it’s been since he’s asked. Too long, probably – Harry suddenly, passionately decides that he should start asking everyone that every day.

“I am,” Gemma says. She loops her arm around his neck and tugs him closer until their heads knock together. “And you?”

Harry shrugs. “Closer,” he says, and Gemma accepts it as an answer. It’s good, Harry thinks. It’s maybe the best answer.

***

Louis’s boss, Simon, calls both him and Harry to a meeting in his office after the weekend. Harry’s piece got fourteen thousand hits and was still climbing when he left his flat with his toothbrush still in his mouth that morning, foam dribbling out of the corner of his mouth.

“We’re gonna get fired,” Harry says, sighing, with his hands steepled in his lap.

“No offense but I’d absolutely throw you under the bus,” Louis says. “I’ve got a kid to support.”

Harry nods once. “And I can crash on your couch till I find my next place.”

“Always.”

They fist bump. Simon’s assistant signals for them to shuffle into his office.

Louis and Harry shake hands with Simon over his desk. Simon’s grip is firm, and his palm is impossibly dry. He must never moisturize. Harry opens his mouth to tell him to, and then he remembers Louis’s whispered “Shut up and let me do all the talking,” so he doesn’t.

“Well, lads,” Simon says.

Louis and Harry shift in their chairs. Louis’s breathing is deep and slow, as if calm, which Harry knows Louis only does when he’s stressed out. Harry sat with him in the waiting room at Freddie’s delivery listening to him Lamaze-breathe himself almost into a meditation, and Harry had been there with cheese sandwiches when the meditation broke and panic set in. Funny, how it feels a world away now.

“I just wanted to congratulate you on your last assignment,” Simon tells Harry. “It was clever of you to have given him that assignment,” he tells Louis.

“I,” Louis says.

“Thanks,” says Harry politely.

Simon nods. “We want a part two.”

“Part two,” Harry repeats numbly.

“Thank you,” Louis finally says. “Thanks, sir.”

“But,” Harry starts.

Simon hands Harry a paper reeling off suggested questions for him to ask Niall, like _What is your favorite city?_ and _What personality traits do you feel make you a good representative of your country?_ “Goodness,” says Harry. “I’m not _dating_ him.”

“The readers have spoken,” Simon says magnanimously. “We’ve already contacted his publicist. He’s participating in Soccer Aid, and you’re to report on it. Have fun. Not too much.”

Louis makes it all the way to the lift back down to their floor before he pulls Harry into a crushing hug. “Good lad,” he tells Harry, who feels flushed and pleased all the way back to his own cubicle, where he sits down to contemplate his life for the rest of the afternoon, or maybe the remainder of his life. Everything is _fine_ and Harry’s still wondering why it doesn’t feel like enough.

He thinks of Niall’s _Given a chance,_ and suddenly he’s pulling up the Peace Corps site and finishing his application. He hesitates before pushing the button. He imagines his life spiraling off in different directions: pushed the button, didn’t push the button. It’s impossible to know which is the right choice, which life is happier. It’s impossible to move on until he’s let go of his fragile, not-very-exciting life here, and now, and for all that Harry’s complained about it, he can’t do it.

He saves the application and closes the window. Then he sets about booking himself reservations for Soccer Aid.  

***

“I have to say, it wouldn’t be a public event without you dogging me,” Niall tells Harry when he finds him at the hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet.

Harry puffs out his chest. He sprays bits of crumbly scone saying, “That’s me. Harry Styles, ace reporter.”

“Well, ace, I hope you’re up for a long day,” Niall sighs.

The Rest of the World and Harry are all staying at the same hotel. It makes running into someone intimidatingly famous almost impossible to avoid, which is both exciting and a little bit scary. Harry spent an hour on his hair this morning and he barely has any hair left to style.

He swallows his mouthful of breakfast. Niall is flanked with his regular security guy, Bas, who offers Harry a small, warm smile. Harry smiles back. “You haven’t seen Pele around, have you?” Harry brushes crumbs off the front of his shirt. “You’ve got to give me a shout if you do.”

Niall’s cheek creases in that particular way he has. “Will do.”

Harry falls into step with them on their way out of the hotel. They’ve got a suit fitting and team practice, and then probably dinner with the team, and “Yes, Harry, Pele will probably be there. Why weren’t you this excited to meet me?”

Harry shrugs. “I dunno. You weren’t very excited to meet me either, remember.”

Niall scoffs and rolls his eyes but lets the subject drop.

Most of the rest of the team is already at the tailor’s when they arrive; they’re all on continental time, though. Harry chats with Ronaldinho and Iwan while Niall disappears behind a curtain to get changed. Harry thought about doing the whole proper reporter thing and bringing his tape recorder and notepad and pen, but then he figured, _Why bother?_

“I wish I was writing about the whole team,” Harry says. “It’d be like the United Nations, minus England and, like, all the rest of the shit parts.”

Harry can hear Niall laugh all the way back in his changing room. The curtain draws back and he steps through wearing a tailored suit that makes his skin look so warm and peachy, his eyes bright and clear. The first time Harry saw _Jurassic Park_ he could swear he could touch those dinosaurs. He gets the same feeling from Niall now. Not that he’s a dinosaur, but more like he’s something unreal made real.

 _He wears a suit fine,_ Harry imagines writing in his article.

“Does this mean you’re recognizing Ireland as a proper nation?” he asks Harry.

“Oh, yes, always have done,” says Harry. He eyeballs the hollow at Niall’s throat. “It’s just you I wondered about.”

“And now?” Niall asks. It almost sounds like a challenge, if not for the fact that Niall struggles not to laugh, his voice trembling with it. His eyes are serious, though, lasered into Harry’s face.

“I’m still not calling you ‘your highness,’” Harry shrugs.

Niall’s eyes crease up when he laughs, Harry notices.

***

Everyone but Harry gets a kit to wear on the field. Harry spends most of practice tweeting about how much he would appreciate a set of cleats and a uniform for himself, and also asking everybody who follows him to please donate toward the cause. Niall retweets Harry’s most pitiful _I look great in blue :)_  and adds, “He won’t stop whinging ! Put us out of our misery .”

The manager texts Harry that he’ll get a kit, thanks for promoting the cause.

“Celebrity is like a superpower,” Harry tells Niall on their way back to the hotel. Harry’s sat up front with Bas while Niall sits sideways in the backseat with an ice pack on his knee. His eyes are slitted against the pain and he clenches his jaw every time they go over a bump. “Hey,” he starts, a little concerned. “I thought you were just going to be assistant manager.”

“I know, I am,” Niall assures him. “It’s really nothing. Go back to – what were you saying? Something off in the head?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Not quite, your majesty.”

Niall snorts. “Turn around in your seat, stop lookin’ at me. Christ, if Bas wrecks us.”

Harry obediently turns around for approximately ten seconds. Then he turns round again. “I was saying that celebrity is like a superpower. Like, the way you can just get things. Like my uniform, or, I don’t know, - ”

“Getting people to donate to Unicef?” Niall asks with a grin.

Harry turns around and slumps against his seat, reconsidering. He spots Niall looking at him in the rearview mirror. “Your majesty,” Harry repeats, putting as much exasperation as he can into it.

Niall grins, looking immensely satisfied. Harry doesn’t think too much into it.

Dinner that night is subdued. Everybody seems tired from practice, from fittings, from wanting so hard to win. Harry sips on his Guinness and watches Niall carefully stretch his knee when he thinks nobody is looking, the smile never leaving his face. _I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a superhero,_ Harry imagines writing, _not yet, anyway._

***

Because Harry has the proper kit and everything, he thinks it only fair if he gets a chance to practice with the team. Ranieri gives in when Sheen does, so Harry jogs onto the field, feeling all of five years old and absolutely, utterly buoyant.

“Don’t kill my team before we even get to play, ace,” Niall just says, shading his eyes from the sun.

Harry whoops and amiably trots to his spot on the field.

Setting aside the fact that he’s the worst footie player any of them have ever seen, Harry has a blast on the field. The game is a lot less likely to stop when it’s professionals playing it and not just his pick-up team who have to break every time an eighteen-wheeler drives by and blows their net away.

Harry’s mostly minding his own business midfield when Cafu gives a shout, and suddenly the ball is flying toward Harry, who drives it toward the goal with a sense of frenzied focus; everything else fades away till it’s just him and his lungs and the ball at his feet, his whole life on the line. Davids and Evans, playing opposition, close in, so Harry just kicks the ball and hopes for the best.

He’s running the other way when Dida lets out a disbelieving shout, and then Harry spots the ball at the back of the net. The team rushes in on him for a group hug, and Harry lets himself be carried away by it all for a moment: the rush of adrenaline, his aching legs, his heaving chest. The vicissitude of being alive.

And then he breaks away to Niall, who’s jogging in from his spot on the sideline. “Did you see that?” Harry whoops, even though Niall must’ve. “That was for you!” Harry barely stops himself from jumping at Niall, who holds his hands up for a high five. Harry links their fingers together and then, next thing he knows, he’s breathing in the salt-sweet smell of Niall’s neck, his heart banging wildly against Niall’s chest.

Harry draws back feeling oddly – he’s not quite sure what to say now, is all, with the adrenaline fading. “So,” he says. “Can I play?”

“Hell no,” says Niall. “I don’t want you winning against us.”

Harry’s so delighted he can’t quite believe his smile doesn’t break his face.

***

Game day finds Harry sequestered in the press box with the rest of the publicists and journalists and paps. He’s wearing his team jersey underneath his starched green button-up. He feels improbably naked amongst this sea of media middlemen, like they’ll see that he’s not one of them, or that he is, Harry’s not sure which.

England takes the field first in their bright red uniforms; Harry can just hear Louis’s _Look at our boys!_ Five minutes later, the Rest of the World trot out onto the field. Niall looks flushed and wind-whipped in his blue uniform. His neon yellow jersey marks him apart from the rest of the team at first glance, and Harry feels a strange swell of…yes, pride, for him.

Harry reckons he’s mostly there for a few feel-good reports on Niall hugging his teammates and counting the number of times the Jumbotron flickers to his face, and then Niall’s shrugging out of his assistant manager jersey and leaning into a few deep lunges, and Harry’s heart drops to his stomach.

 _Are you mad,_ he texts Niall.

He watches Niall check his texts in real time. His eyebrows draw together; his cheek creases. _This one’s for you,_ Niall sends, and Harry wants to cover his eyes, settles for cramming his fist in his mouth instead. He remembers the gnarly scar carved down Niall’s knee, a surprisingly mangled thing for someone who still looks like a kid in the right light.

Harry wants to turn himself into a parachute and drape himself carefully over Niall like a security blanket. Harry wants a Xanax, or a drop of whiskey. Harry wants those words tattooed forever for posterity. 

Niall plays carefully, mindful of himself, thank goodness. Harry texts Gemma wildly, when England calls for a time-out, _I DON’T KNOW HOW CRUTCHES WORK_

Gemma sends back a row of question marks that Harry forgets to respond to for the rest of the evening, because Rest of the World catches the ball, then Murs steals it, dribbles it toward the net, Harry grabs the nearest reporter’s arm and stretches up on his toes, and England scores. 3-2, England, and the game is over.

“Bastards,” Harry swears.

He’s still fuming by the time he gets passed through security into the locker room. “I’m going to write them all up as absolute villains,” Harry swears.

“There’s our lad,” Iwan says, and reels him in for a kiss to the top of his head.

The team leaves the locker room to go back to the hotel for the afterparty one by one. Harry waits for Niall, who lingers till everyone else has gone home and the stadium has emptied except for cleaning staff moving amongst rows and rows of seats collecting rubbish.

“You okay?” Harry asks, surprisingly worried. Surprising himself.  

Niall casts a conspiratorial glance around. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to play on the field one last time?”

Their one-on-one pickup game dwindles into shuffling the ball back and forth so that they can talk. “I thought you put in a good effort,” Harry promises. “It’s the damn English. I’ve always known they were full of shite.”

Niall laughs outright. “Listen to you. Are you Irish now or summat?”

Harry nods. “Yeah. You can do that, right, prince?”

Niall considers it. “I don’t know. Let’s see. Kneel, right? I’ll, like, knight you.”

So Harry drops to one knee. Niall casts about for something to use as a sword and settles for Harry’s pen. “I, Niall Horan, crown prince of the united countries of Ireland, do hereby name you a knight of the kingdom. Er, good?”

Harry looks up at Niall, the sharp, almost antique lines of his face thrust into regal beauty by the stadium lights. Harry’s ribs press against the size of his heart. “Make me swear an oath. Like, fealty, you know?”

“Right, okay. Repeat after me: I, Harry Styles.”

“I, Ace Reporter Harry Styles,” Harry repeats solemnly.

Niall rolls his eyes. “Do hereby swear to…” Harry waits while Niall’s eyes rove over his face. “Swear to travel far and wide, in the name of – of the prince of Ireland, doing good works.”

“Niall…” Harry doesn’t know what to say next. He has the same naked feeling as before, but it isn’t unpleasant now, or uncomfortable; he looks at Niall and knows Niall sees the person Harry wants to be, even if Harry’s not quite sure who that is. “Niall.”

“You didn’t swear it,” Niall says, his voice just a little dry.

Harry repeats the words. Niall clears his throat. “There you go, then.”

The moment feels like it balances on a knife’s edge. There’s only a few days in Harry’s life that he can look back on and see his future unfurling in different directions. The day he chose a uni. The day he answered Louis’s ad for a roommate. Harry licks his lips, and for fear of choosing wrong, says nothing. The moment slips away.

In the car on their way back to the hotel for the after party, Harry checks his phone. Gemma’s texted _Everything changes, little brother. That’s not a bad thing_ , that Harry feels down to his bones. He feels maudlin and silly, because he wouldn’t miss his family or his days at uni or the way things were if the way things were wasn’t so _great._ The next thing to do is fall in love with his life all over again, even knowing it won’t stay the same.

Harry opens his Peace Corp application on his phone and finally, finally submits it. The first person he wants to tell is Niall. Harry wonders what that means.

He doesn’t get a chance to talk to Niall until he gets to the party, and there he finds Niall firmly at the center of things, his laugh bouncing along like its part of the DJ’s set. Harry works his way through a Stella and hugs from members from both teams. The evening ticks inexorably onward until suddenly it’s two o’clock in the morning and Harry has to be in at work at 8 with a rough draft of today’s write-up, and he hasn’t even started. He retires back to his room feeling let down, and not that the team hadn't won. That _he_ hadn’t won.

The thing is, Harry can’t write up the match because all he can think about is Niall standing over him on the football field, his eyes clear and bright and blue, seeing and forgiving, and how Harry doesn’t know how to write that. He doesn’t want to end on a _Not yet._

Harry throws his legs over the side of the bed and wrestles into his t-shirt in one swift movement without stopping, like he’s afraid of losing momentum. Then he’s padding down the hall to Niall’s room, where a security guard stands watch outside. Harry clears his throat. “Er,” he starts. “Can I knock, please?”

The security guard looks him up and down. Harry can just imagine the image he makes in his socks and bedhead. “Yeah. I’m a big fan of your work,” the guard grins.

Harry shakes his head – he can’t believe his life, sometimes – and then he knocks on the door and jiggles the handle till Niall wrenches it open, looking ten thousand shades of exasperated.

“Hello,” says Harry. “It’s me.”

Niall’s still wearing his trousers and shirt. He looks careworn and weary, and he looks satisfied, and he doesn’t seem unhappy to see Harry. “I thought you’d gone back to your room to do your write-up,” he says. The words feel meaningless and empty and Harry realizes he doesn’t really care about the stupid article, or his job. He can be Louis’s friend and not work with him.

“Can I come in, please?” Harry says.

Niall steps back after a split second of hesitation, or consideration, or maybe something else Harry doesn’t want to put a name to. Doubt, he thinks mercilessly.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Niall asks, so Harry sits down on the couch. Niall’s sat just a few feet away, but the distance feels like miles. He has so much to say, but he can’t seem to pop the cork and start talking, and he’s looking at Niall now and all he can think of is that first day he met him and how he might’ve walked away and never given him a second look. He’s thinking how awful that’d be.

“I applied for the Peace Corp,” Harry says. “And I want to kiss you. Like, that’s why I came over, in case you were wondering.” It’s not a very good start, but it enables Harry to say, “D’you ever look at someone and think, like, not that you’re going to love them, but that they’re going to break your heart, and how that’s the same thing?”

“Harry,” Niall says. His voice sounds like _Don’t do this._ His voice sounds like _I do._

“Because I do,” Harry pushes on. “Like, the way I loved my life before, Louis and my sister, and partying every weekend and going home on holidays like my mum could still mark the spot on the wall to show how much I’d grown. I loved it so much it broke my heart, and, like,” Harry looks at Niall, who’s looking back a him so steadily, so unafraid. “Getting my heart broken was the best thing that ever happened to me, I think.”

Niall gets up and starts pacing. “Harry,” he says. “You know why I wasn’t angry with you for talking shit to me that first night?”

Harry shakes his head. “It’s ‘cos I liked the way you saw me,” answers Niall. “Just a boring bloke. Someone who could go anywhere, anywhere, anytime, alone, and no one would stop or stare or even care. I wasn’t even a very good person. You know what that feels like?”

 _Not mattering,_ Harry thinks. _Being unimportant._

“Being free,” Niall answers.

Harry thinks about all the possible responses to that. _I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d find a way to live with it._ Instead, he says, “I want you to kiss me.”

“Harry,” Niall laughs. It sounds a little like a sob. He drifts closer, though, step by step, like he can’t possibly resist. Harry scrambles up to his knees, the better to catch Niall by his hips, to press his mouth against Niall’s.

When Niall is no more than a step away, Harry closes his eyes. Niall’s hands settle on either side of Harry’s face, every brush of his fingertips an exquisite point of contact, and Harry sets his mouth to be kissed, leans impatiently into Niall’s grip. Niall presses his lips to Harry’s forehead in a gesture so tender that it hurts, and then he kisses Harry’s eyelids, the tops of his cheeks, his nose, his chin.

He stays close enough that Harry could surge forward, find his mouth. Deep down in his bones he’s buzzing over the thought of a desolated town in a far-off place where Harry can learn as much as he teaches and put his back into it. Deep down he’s thinking of all the days and nights he’ll get to spend somewhere making an infinitesimal degree of difference, and how promising it is.

“Give me two years,” Harry says. “And then I’m going to really fucking kiss you.”

Niall kisses Harry again, one last time, right over the dimple in his cheek. “You are just following my orders, after all.”

*** 

Harry gets deployed to Armenia for two years starting in March. He reads a book on the history of Armenia on the plane and texts Niall on his layover at Charles De Gaulle, _You can extradite me if I get into any trouble, right,_ to which Niall responds, _A king never abandons one of his knights ._ Harry toys with answering that Niall’s not a king, but really, it’s just a matter of time.

 _Be good,_ Harry sends.

 _We are,_ Niall sends back.

***

As it happens, they can’t wait to the end of Harry’s deployment. He gets a three-day holiday to return to England for his sister’s wedding halfway through his deployment and invites Niall to be his plus one. “Can’t, sorry,” Niall says mildly. “Gemma already invited me.”

“The betrayal,” Harry gasps. Niall just laughs. “I was going to wait till I saw you again, but you know I – ”

“Wait, don’t say it yet,” Niall says. “I want to see your face. See if you’re half as ugly as I remember.”

“See if I ever try to be romantic again,” Harry sniffs.

He lands at Heathrow twenty minutes earlier than expected, so he’s planning to collect his luggage and then maybe buy Niall a London tourist t-shirt just to be funny. Instead, he steps into the terminal to find Louis waiting for him, baby in hand.

Harry only barely avoids bursting into tears. “You’re so big,” he says instead.

“He’s growing like a weed,” Louis says proudly, scooping up his toddler – toddler, now – and gently settling him into Harry’s arms. Louis shoulders Harry’s bag.

“Yeah,” Harry says, even though he meant Louis, too. It’s funny the way people grow into their lives. Like how Harry can look at his students in the school in Armenia and be amazed, from one day to the other, how much bigger they are, how little they’re going to need him soon. It looks like growing into everything they always could’ve been, given a chance.

Louis drives them all to Harry’s hometown. Harry watches Freddie snore in his little car seat in the rearview mirror, Louis humming along to an album Harry hasn’t heard yet. It’s so strange to be back even after just a year gone, and he did six months in uni, but the whole world feels different. Harry doesn’t feel too big for his skin, or too small, or like anything other than what he is. Sometimes it’s not other peoples’ expectations that make you feel like you don’t fit, it’s your own.

Harry watches the familiar miles between London and Holmes Chapel roll by and feels the fuzzy-warm feeling of time folding over, again. They’re still Louis and Harry, and they might be headed to Leeds Fest, or home for holiday. They might be heading back for Gemma’s birthday with Louis’s toddler in the back, and someday they’ll probably make this trip again. A large part of Harry can’t wait to go back and finish his deployment, but a not insignificant part, a part that grows by the day, is looking forward to coming home and putting down roots.

Niall is sat at the kitchen table playing Scrabble with Harry’s mum and Robin and Gemma when Harry and Louis get in. Harry’s practically running even as he says, “You already met my mum? Don’t I get to do anything normal in this relationship?”

“I missed you, too,” Niall says, and then Harry can’t hear anything else; he’s too focused on wrapping his arms around Niall’s neck and never, ever letting go. He smells like leather and old books and expensive cologne. Harry wants to eat him, and also to curl up in his library-smell with a book and stay.

For now, it’s enough to tuck himself into his mum’s side and help her go for the triple-point score tile. Gemma’s and Niall’s and Louis’s faces are so warm in the kitchen light, Freddie’s babbling and Robin’s cooing a soft, sweet soundtrack. Right now could be ten years ago, or two, or now. Or years and years from now, Harry hopes.

***

Harry stumbles into his childhood bedroom with his mouth on the spot behind Niall’s ear, Niall’s hands tangled in his shaggy hair.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” Niall says, while Harry tries to pull his button-up shirt off over his head.

“Very beautiful,” Harry agrees. Niall’s head gets snared in the collar, so Harry resigns himself to unfastening the buttons. It’s a slow and terrible torture, but Niall falls silent, his hands clenching in Harry’s hair, so Harry deliberately slows down. He kisses every fresh patch of skin he unearths with each button. If Niall’s ragged breaths are any indication, he’s enjoying it.

Harry finally has his damned shirt open and his mouth on Niall’s neck, dangerously high up, a visible mark, when Niall says, “Wait.”

“What?” Harry asks, drawing back.

“Just, I don’t know, I thought you’d want the first time to be romantic.”

“We lit a candle,” Harry points out.

Niall’s nose wrinkles. He says, “That was a citronella candle, though, Harry. For the mosquitoes.”

“So? Now every time I’m out getting bit I’ll lovingly look back on this moment. Oh, maybe I’ll get turned on by mosquitoes. That’s. Er. Maybe we should put it out.”

“Harry,” Niall laughs.

Harry makes himself focus for a moment on something that’s not the blue veins traced across the round of Niall’s arm, the deep flush crawling up his chest like climbing ivy. He looks half-ruined already, with his shirt open over his bare chest, Harry’s finger marks on his hips, a hectic flush in his cheeks. His eyes have never looked quite so blue.

The sweet sharp smell of the candle mixes with the late spring air blown through the open window. Everything feels rich and ripe and growing. “We’ve got time, yeah? Next time we’ll go slow, and I’ll let you ruin me proper, but right now, I just want you to kiss me.”

And, thankfully, Niall does. Harry kisses him and thinks, _This would be enough, right here,_ but he thinks that all the time. Sharing a phone call with him despite a truly hurtful time difference, or watching Niall’s name pop up in his Twitter feed at the center of another charity event, or the signing of a new trade agreement. It’d be enough just that he’s out there somewhere, really. Doing good. Being good.

“You can say it now, ace,” Niall says, like he’s some sort of mind reader. Harry looks at this person who’s about to shag him in his lumpy old bed: a prince, an ordinary guy, a very dear friend.

“Your highness,” Harry says, and Niall laughs, and kisses him.

Later, so late it might actually be early, Niall says, “You know what I think about when I’ve been locked up for days and still have papers to read and sign, and speeches to learn?”

“I hope it’s less boring than that sounds,” Harry says. He drags his fingers down Niall’s bare back, connecting one freckle to another. _Dot,_ there’s them meeting at that disastrous media event. _Dot,_ there’s the Horan and Rose event. _Dot,_ there’s Harry almost killing them with a golf cart. Somehow it adds up to so much more than the sum of their parts.

“I think about you finishing your deployment, and flying home. And one day you’re ready, and I’m sat at my desk at the house in Ireland. When the doorbell goes, I don’t think anything of it. But you’re home. And I’ll take you to the shore where I used to fly kites with my mum, and we can watch the waves. You’d love it.”

Harry lets out a little sigh. He thinks of the fairytale ending, _Happily ever after,_ but that doesn't even really begin to cover it. Instead, he says, “I swear.”

**Author's Note:**

> kudos/comments are UNFATHOMABLY appreciated, and thank u so much for reading!! if u wanna talk, i'm at niallspringsteen.tumblr.com


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